Monthly Archives: November 2010

With Wills and Kate announcing their engagement St Andrews has been the focus of the media this week, with everyone wanting to know more about the place the two met and fell in love. My friend says that the BBC are camped outside of sallies ( St Salvator’s hall for those of you from outside our little bubble.) since that’s where WIlls stayed when he was here. On top of that out lovely union has decided to put on a Kate and Wills bop this friday with the tag line “Get your tweed out, don your pearls and bare your Barbours for this weeks WILLS AND KATE BOP!”

Now I know so many people have already commented on the blog, but it really does need commenting on. Its portraying a stereotype as a majority. I cannot say if this is in fact what St Andrews was like when Wills was here but it’s defiantly changed now. Here is the authors opinion of a St Andrews girl

“Kate Middleton belongs to this group. In fact you could almost say she’s a classic St Andrews girl. They are fresh-faced and wholesome and they typically wear Barbours, pashminas, tailored tweed jackets, padded bodywarmers, pearls and Tiffany hearts. They’re prosperous, obviously – they drink spirits in the bars, not beer – and they’ve probably picked up the habit of flicking back their expensively highlighted hair when it falls into their eyes. Not that they’re a bunch of squares. Underneath the demure exterior there may lie a streak of raciness: witness that university fashion show when Kate sauntered down the aisle in a see-through dress.”

This is basically a description of a yah girl, never heard the phrase, well urban dictionary it. Now walking through town you could be convinced that theses are the only girls who go to St Andrews. LOOK CLOSER, they are just the girls who make their presence known, walking in big groups, talking loudly flicking their hair in your face, and congregating at night in the lizard, or the Westport. The rest of the girls in St Andrews, well they are bundled up, it is Scotland after all, usually with their hair in a style that can’t be destroyed by the north sea wind, and are normally found in their department, or the library or at home, working. Because St Andrews is a prestigious university, it has high standards and for those of us who have come to university to get a degree and help our futures. (Instead of those who came because they thought that should or because it is what society accepts.) Those of us working, are working hard to secure a high class degree, one that will help us with future academic pursuits or career.

So yes there are Yahs in St Andrews, but not as many as you think, it’s just that the normal girls (though normal doesn’t really fit such a broad spectrum) are keeping themselves to them selves and either working or catching up with friends, or having fun, but mostly not caring about what people think of them.

Oh and Andrew M Brown if you’re going to write about a university at least do your research, the fact you got the universities name wrong says it all, WE ARE THE UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS, goodnight.